Ville Hytönen: A Tree for the Dead

Ville Hytönen: Three poems from Karsikkopuu (A Tree for the Dead, Tammi 2011)

Translated by David McDuff

[20]

Locked as in a form of wrestling, one by one the men went leaping
over the campfire flame. Some sang bear songs while the others
skinned the bear, and the men and women kissed it
and spoke beautifully, and the bear’s hide was carried
to the place in a birch basket.

About the bruin a word, about the bear a psalm. The moon’s sickle cuts
the bear’s hide, for the moon is the light and the hide is this land.

*

[52]

BE GUILTY

tent – be a forest
youth – be an isthmus
fear – be a swamp
murder – be a lake
corpse – be a cache
in the marshy forest, be unforgettable
sorrow – be a village where
they whisper about you, be
silent when you speak, be
sin or purity
be a spell, a very
uniform Finnish
spell.

[52-53]

THREE DEMANDS OF A FISH

1

the fish that someone gathered & the eye into which someone skilfully
inserted the black mirror that someone recently invented and
lastly the stone in which the fish lay. The one who threw it,
let him cook the fish in pieces and let him tell his name.

2

The fish that someone took apart & the eye which as it burst
left a black hole which was not there before and lastly
the unthrown stone whose thrower did not even have a name.

3

The anonymous fish he cooked & the eye
in which trembling all round was reflected the age-old destruction
that had existed as long as he could remember and finally
the stone that burned under the fish and a kind of timelessness,
an anonymous one.